


The Light Before Storms

by Residesatshamecentral



Series: A Plague On Both Your Houses [8]
Category: SS-GB (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Cold War, Discussions of redemption, Ominous art appreciation, Threats of Violence, bespoke spy stuff, implied pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 04:27:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16988031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Residesatshamecentral/pseuds/Residesatshamecentral
Summary: Huth takes his life in his hands.





	The Light Before Storms

Huth sat silently for a while after the distant sound of the front door closing told him that Archer had left. He listened as a car started up in the driveway and watched without moving as the dark shape moved along the road outside the window. The headlights were a brief glow before the car was lost to sight around a bend. Only the lighthouse remained, flashing its warning forever into the night.

He stood up. Moving in practised silence, he climbed the stairs, careful to keep the side to minimise creaking. The tired butler stifled a yawn in the hall. Huth glanced at the ornate clock in the upper hallway. The gilded hands pointed to just after midnight. Logic told him that the old man would be in bed, but instinct, from its dark seat in the hind brain, goaded him on without words. He moved methodically, counting the doors. Finally, his had settled on the knob of a door he had not opened before, where dull light glowed from the bottom.

“I was beginning to wonder if you had left after all” said Maugham.

Huth closed the door behind him, smirking slightly. “I can’t resist a chance to be proven right.”

Maugham nodded, removing the earphones. The armchair he was sitting in made him look very small. It was one of the old-fashioned wing chairs that half-envelop anyone sitting in them. He had changed into white silk pyjamas with a matching nightcap and a loose red dressing gown. He looked to Huth’s eyes like an elderly hobbit. “I have that flaw too. The number of times I broke my own heart, testing the people around me.” Maugham nodded at the fireplace beside him. “It makes a wonderful amplifier, a chimney. You hardly need any help at all.” He switched off the device beside him. “Am I in for an earful, Oskar?”

“Of course not. I expected it. I did the same to my agents, once.” Huth flung himself into the other chair flanking the fire.

Maugham nodded and let his eyes drift to the painting that hung opposite him on the wall. “Archer is a principled man, I think.”

“Can anyone afford much principle, in the world you live in?” Huth followed Maugham’s gaze. The painting was an El Greco. Mary Magdaline, loosely robed in red, gestured enigmatically to a skull at her side. A black cross seemed to be toppling in the background, as though the last vestige of a cause was falling and a moment later she would stand alone. The light was the strange light before a storm breaks, electric and sullen, warning light. Huth wondered how much Maugham had paid for it.

Maugham shook his head. “In this job, you can’t afford to lose your principles” he said. “You need a conscience, even if it is just there to lacerate. You just have to find the right balance. Will I live with this? Or this? Is it worth it to wake up to his eyes in the night? When do you say no, this is too far? Of course” he added “I did screw up now and then. But your Archer seems the right type.”

“He’s not ‘my’ Archer.’”

“No.” Maugham’s tone was soft. A great many unspoken words hovered in the silence.

Huth shifted casually in the chair, his eyes still on the painting. Under his arm, the small Beretta he had bought on the way home was a comforting weight. “Did you engineer his coming here?”

“If I had, would you resent me for it?”

“Anyone would.”

“Would they? Perhaps they would. But there is room for more than one emotion, surely.” Maugham gestured towards the painting with a trembling hand. “One of my greatest treasures. Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful.” Maugham seemed to search his face for sarcasm, then nodded, his eyes misting over. “Some painters shape the way you see life” he said ruminatively. “I learned as a young man that restraint – principle, if you like – was an active, noble thing. A passionate thing. I learned it from El Greco. No-one else taught me that. I was so young. I thought ‘good behaviour’ was the word sheep use to describe their grazing habits.”

“It often is.”

“But we know better. You know better, or you would not be here.” Maugham looked amiably around to the barrel of the Beretta levelled at his face.

“I don’t know how much the El Greco is worth” said Huth “but I am sure I could find a place to get it reliably valued. The money would keep me.”

“Now where did you buy that?” said Maugham with interest “I didn’t even know you could get a gun around here.”

“A pimp in the red light district. You’d be surprised what they sometimes sell.”

“MI6 would hunt you, you know.”

“I’ve been hunted before.”

“You don’t want this, Oskar.”

“Don’t I?”

“Think of Archer.”

“I am thinking of Archer. You brought him here, into the lion’s den.”

“He brought himself. For you. And don’t think for a moment that he didn’t know. His instincts are as good as yours. Why did he come?”

“How should I know?” Huth nodded at the carpet. “I hate to do this to the servants; Your brains will not scrub out of that easily.”

“He came here, Oskar, because he believes in the best of you. Not the worst. Not the man who stood by Springer knowing what he did in Lithuania -” Huth flinched and the gun jerked in his hand “- the best of you. The man who can sleep at peace with his conscience. Who are you? Which one is you, Oskar? I can’t stop you from pulling that trigger. But I can tell you one thing. It is your life in your hands right now. Not mine. Mine is practically over. Your life.”

There was total silence in the room.


End file.
